


If It Makes You Happy

by lonelytarot



Category: Naruto
Genre: Affairs, Alternate Ending, Angst, Hokage Uzumaki Naruto, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Light Angst, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Office Sex, True Love, Uchiha Sasuke Returns to Konoha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 15:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14335614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelytarot/pseuds/lonelytarot
Summary: Happiness is a strange, fickle thing.





	If It Makes You Happy

All through his life, Naruto had worked for happiness. He worked, day in and day out, to create happiness for himself and to share that with others. He had fought and battled and cried and clawed his way up the mountain against all odds to find what truly made him happy, and Sasuke had watched.

Sasuke had watched the one person he felt some unexplainable connection to move through life with that goal in mind. He watched on as Naruto surrounded himself with countless friends and allies. He stayed away, afraid his presence was an unspoken danger to what his friend had worked for. He tried to run, to distance himself so that he couldn't infect that happiness Naruto had worked so desperately for.

But Sasuke had ended up destroying that happiness, shredding the blond's hard work to pieces when he ran. He watched as the mirror he saw himself in, the happy spark in Naruto's eyes, shattered into a million pieces. He watched Naruto cry, watched him scream. And for years, he was deaf to the cries begging him to come home.

Even when he did return, after that fateful day at the Valley of the End, Naruto was still broken. He had glued the pieces together, but still, he would never be the same. And Sasuke knew.

He knew from the aching behind Naruto's smile when they talked during his breaks from travelling. He knew from the dried speckles on the notes his hawk carried back to him. He knew, in those late night hours where only the leaves and the nocturnal predators made sounds in the underbrush, that Naruto was not going to be happy again. At least, not easily.

Sure, Naruto had tried to patch the cracks in his smile with a family, with his dreams. He buried himself under paperwork piles and private tears under ink blotches. He hid his fragile heart behind the frequent texts he would send Sasuke in the dead of night when he wandered out of bed, away from his wife and into the chilly night air. But Sasuke was not a fool. And he certainly wasn't blind.

So Sasuke visited more often. Usually without anyone but Naruto noticing him. He snuck into the Hokage's office as the sun descended behind the horizon and Shikamaru left to return to his family, and left before it rose and the Hokage's advisor returned again. He always left with the taste of miso and salt on his lips, and words Naruto whispered to his heart swimming inside his head.

They were connected. Naruto's happiness was fleeting, sporadic. Sasuke felt it. He felt his heart swell when he saw momentary bliss fill the crevices in Naruto's shattered heart, when he saw the aftermath of a feeling neither of them could truly put into words. He felt something squeezing tightly around his heart when he left before sunrise, constricting and twisting the organ until it made it hard to breathe.

But Sasuke couldn't make Naruto's happiness last forever. No matter how much he wanted to. So instead, he settled for doing what he could. If their shared nights were all he could offer, if giving Naruto one last fragile kiss before he disappeared again was all he could manage to keep Naruto's heart together, he would do it as much as it took. 

If it- no, If HE- made Naruto happy, then he would keep their fire burning. As long as Naruto was happy, he was happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Ive fallen back into SNS, and I was feeling down today so I used it as an excuse to vent-write some light angst.


End file.
